Constructed Languages - Day 2 - Linguistic Society of America · Klingon, Sindarin, and Dothraki...

Day 2 - What is a ConLang?

Constructed Languages

▪ We talked about “Far Cry Primal”

▪ Now let’s talk about you–What brings you to ConLangs?

What is a ConLang?

▪ Short for “Constructed Language”

▪ I.e., not a “natural language” (NatLang)

Artistic Languages

▪ Klingon, Sindarin, and Dothraki are all ArtLangs

▪ ArtLangs are “created for aesthetic, fictional, or otherwise artistic purposes” (Peterson, 2015: 21)

Famous ConLangs▪ First appearances of what modern scholars call ConLangs were

for religious / magical purposes

1. Lingua Ignota, 12th c. CE2. Balaibalan (Baleybelen), 14th c. CE3. Enochian, 16th c. CE4. Damin (???)

▪ Many consider these to be ArtLangs as well

Lingua Ignota, 12th c. CE

▪ St. Hildegard von Bingen– Abbess, Christian mystic– Suffered from terrible migraines– Viewed as source of religious visions

– Patron saint of ConLangers

Lingua Ignota, 12th c. CE

▪ In early 1140s, v. Bingen received command from God to write down what she experienced– Divine revelation led to list of 1012

nouns, which primarily have to do with church

▪ Glossary from Ignota lingua per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata

▪ aigonz "God"▪ aieganz "angel"▪ inimois "human being"▪ iur "man"▪ vanix "woman"▪ peueriz "father"▪ maiz "mother"▪ limzkil "infant"▪ subizo "servant"

▪ zizia "beard"▪ galschiriz "battle

axe"▪ ualueria "bat"▪ gabia "quail"▪ gluziaz

"spearmint"▪ orschibuz "oak"▪ sapiduz "bee"

Lingua Ignota : ExampleO orzchis Ecclesia, armis divinis praecincta, et hyacinto ornata, tu es caldemia stigmatum loifolum et urbs scienciarum. O, o tu es etiam crizanta in alto sono, et es chorzta gemma.

Conjectured translation:O measureless Church, girded with divine arms and adorned with jacinth, you are the fragrance of the wounds of nations and the city of sciences. O, o, and you are anointed amid noble sound, and you are a sparkling gem.

Ritual ConLangs : Balaibalan▪ Created in Timurid or Safavid Iran, in 14 - 15th

century CE– Creator ▪ mystic Fadel Allah (Fazlullah) from

Asterabad, founder of Hurufism– Sufi doctrine, Azerbaijan

▪ or one of his followers▪ or Muhyi-i Gulshani of Edirne, member of

the Gulshani sufi order of Cairo– Means “Giving tongues to the tongue” in

Balaibalan

Ritual ConLangs : Balaibalan

▪ Only existing source of language is the Baleybelen-dictionary in the Bibliotheque nationale de France & the Princeton U library

Ritual ConLangs : Balaibalan (14th-15th c. CE)

▪ Lexically, by and large an a priori language (vs. a posteriori)– ConLang whose features are not based on existing languages– Perhaps a secret language, designed as a holy or poetic language for

religious purposes– Why? Was believed that each time God reveals himself to humans, was

done so in a new language (Abraham [Hebrew], Jesus [Aramaic], Muhammad [Arabic], etc.)

– Language viewed as a sign that new revelation would happen soon▪ However, grammar looks to Persian, Turkish, & Arabic

– E.g., agglutinative▪ Written in Ottoman variant of Arabic abjad

b f t g gh h

p w v y

m sh c k

v ch

z d

j

l

n

r

s

u

i

a e

Balaibalan Phonology

Balaibalan : Example

-at ‘INF’-a ‘PROG’-e ‘DESID’-i ‘PST’-u ‘perfective’

▪ karat ‘to do’▪ karea ‘doing’▪ kare ‘want to do’▪ kari ‘did’▪ karu ‘done’▪ eba kar ‘will do’▪ ebu kar ‘would do’▪ rea kar ‘have done’▪ reu kar ‘had done’▪ shuk kar ‘can do’, etc.

Balaibalan : ExampleBašāna y-Āna yafnāna yahabān. Yasnam ray-Ān čunā wazanas ragiwzāwa inaša fājā, afajaš famīma imafnā ra‘ālābī qājā, airfam aimafam ja maknad Sanaš zāt jāma inanšanā ayaxšanā, aja maqri almnābī čunāyā raikarfanā rāyā ya‘šanā.

In the name of God, the Indulgent, the Merciful, Praise (be) to God, the Creator of the origin of all things (as) light, who (as) revelation originated from the mouth of those who praise his signs; ... and prayer and praise (be) to our Lord the Praised (Muhammad), origin of all derived and simple things, and (praise) to his family and his companions, who work for those well-meaning to them as mediator.

Ritual Languages : Enochian (late 16th c. CE)

▪ Angelic language recorded by John Dee (right) & colleague Edward Kelley in England– Dee : occult philosopher,

mathematician, astronomer, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I

– Kelley: spirit medium

Ritual Languages : Enochian (late 16th c. CE)

▪ Claimed language revealed to them by Enochian angels– Why Enochian? Acc. to Dee,

Biblical patriarch Enoch last human to know language

– Required to perform Enochian magic

Enochian Alphabet (R to L)

Enochian Example, beginning of First Call

Ol sonf vorsg, goho Iad balt, lansh calz vonpho.

I reign over you, sayeth the God of Justice, in Power exalted above the Firmaments of Wrath.

Actual new language? Shows signs of glossolalia. (Laycock 2001)

Enochian in the Media

Ritual Language : Damin (??? - 1980s) ▪ Lardil Demiin ‘being silent’▪ Spoken only by initiated men on 3

islands in Gulf of Carpentaria, south of PNG

– most notably by Lardil tribe on Mornington Island (Hale 1997)

▪ Lardil & Yangkaal people believe created by mythological feature in the Dreamtime

– Scholars believe invented by elders▪ Only non-African language to use

clicks as part of regular phonemic inventory

Damin, from Dixon 1980, The Languages of Australia

“The striking feature of Damin is its phonology - besides the consonantal inventory of everydayLardil (six stops, six nasals, a lateral, two rhotics and two semi-vowels), Damin also has fournasalized clicks - bilabial /m!/, dental /nh!/, apico-alveolar /n!/ and apico-domal /n.!/ - aningressive lateral fricative /L/, a glottalised, or ejective, velar stop /k'/ and an ejectivebilabial stop /p'/. No other language in Australia has sounds of this nature; Hale remarks thatthe nasalised clicks are like those found in Khosian languages of southern Africa but that heknows of no language with sounds like those which he symbolises by /L/ and /p'/ (the latter isformed not with glottalic pressure, but by creating pressure between the tongue and the bilabialclosure). Damin has a system of only three vowels, a, i, and u, with contrastive length,whereas everyday Lardil distinguishes long and short varieties of four vowels, a, i, u ande.”

Damin, from Dixon 1980, The Languages of Australia

“The phonetician J. C. Catford has pointed out that Damin employs five phonetic initiationtypes - pulmonic egressive (which characterises ALL sounds in most other Australianlanguages), pulmonic ingressive (/L/), velaric ingressive (the clicks), velaric egressive (/p'/)and glottalic egressive (/k'/). No other language in the world has this variety of initiationtypes, leading Catford to 'perhaps hypothesize that [Damin's] sound system is adeliberately invented one.' (Interestingly, the Lardil attribute Damin to a legendarypersonality called Kalthad 'yellow trevally.')”

Damin, from Dixon 1980

“Damin has a small vocabulary, perhaps no more than 250 words in all. It worksmostly in terms of generics - m!i refers to any member of the class of vegetable foods,thuu is used for large sea-dwelling mammals such as dugongs and turtles, thii forelasmobranch fish (stingrays and sharks), Li for bony fish, n!un!u for liquids, and so on.Detailed specification is possible in Damin by appropriate modification of the genericnoun: wiitjpur is the Damin term for various woods and wooden objects but a precisecorrespondent of Lardil mungkumu 'wooden axe' can be given by m!iwu titi-i-n wiitjpur,literally 'sugar-bag (= honey) chopping stick,' a reference to one of its major uses.”

Damin, from Dixon 1980

“There is a Damin form for the negative pole of each major adjectival opposition, thepositive term being derived by preposing kuri-, e.g. tjitjuu 'small,' kuritjituu 'large.'While Lardil has nineteen pronouns and several demonstratives, Damin has a two-term opposition, n!a 'ego' and n!u 'other' (no other language in the world is knownto lack a contrast between first, second and third person singular pronouns). Allbound grammatical forms are, however, identical to everyday Lardil. The fact that thesuffixes used with Damin words are from Lardil (rather than being related to Lardil)can be seen from the occurrence of the normal four vowels of Lardil in these suffixes,as against the three-vowel system of Damin roots. Damin plainly involves the samesemantic and grammatical system as Lardil, although lexical representation is at a moregeneric level; despite the phonological differences it is essentially a further variety ofthe Lardil language, rather than being any sort of separate language.”

Damin : Example (Wikipedia)

Ordinary Lardil

ngithun

dunji-kan ngawa waang-kur werneng-kiyath-ur.

gloss my wife's.younger.brother-gen[4]

dog go-fut food-go-fut

translation My brother-in-law's dog is going to go hunting.

Damin n!aa n!2a-kan nh!2u tiitith-ur m!ii-ngkiyath-ur.

Other types of ConLangs

▪ Auxlang (auxiliary language): created for international/intercultural communication – a created lingua franca

▪ Examples of Auxlangs: a.Solresolb.Volapükc.Esperanto (Ido)d.Latino sine Flexione, Basic English, Globishe.Lingwa de planeta

Famous ConLangs

▪ AuxLangs’ purpose is to replace natural languages (NatLangs) as a means of communication across cultures.

▪ Why not already use an existing language?

AuxLang : Solresol

▪ Devised by Francois Sudre, a French violinist, composer, and music teacher, in 1827

– His book Langue musicale universelle published 4 years after his death in 1866

▪ Was popular for a short period of time, until the rise of Volapük and Esperanto

AuxLang : Solresol

AuxLang : Solresol

AuxLang : Solresol▪ Words made from 1-5 syllables (notes)

– Syllables may be accented or lengthened– Morphology:▪ Feminine marked by stressed final note

– resimire ‘brother’ but resimiré ‘sister’▪ Plural marked by lengthened final note

– resimiree ‘brothers’, resimiréé ‘sisters’▪ Conversion via lengthening as well

– midofa ‘to prefer’, miidofa ‘preference’, midoofa ‘preferable’, midofaa ‘preferably’

– Negation ▪ fala ‘good, tasty’ ~ lafa ‘bad’

Solresol Example

AuxLang : Volapük

▪ Created by Johann Martin Shleyer, Roman Catholic priest from Baden, Germany, 1879-1880

– Told in a dream by God to create an international language▪ By 1889:

– 283 clubs– 25 periodicals– 316 textbooks in 25 different languages– claimed 1 million adherents (likely too high)– Held 3rd convention on language exclusively in Volapük▪ this had never been done before … ever

AuxLang : Volapük

1880 Schleyer Volapük 1930 de Jong Volapük

O Fat obas, kel binol in süls, O Fat obas, kel binol in süls!paisaludomöz nem ola! Nem olik pasalüdükonöd!Kömomöd monargän ola! Regän ola kömonöd!Jenomöz vil olik, äs in sül, i su tal! Vil olik jenonöd, äsä in sül, i su tal!Bodi obsik vädeliki givolös obes adelo! Givolös obes adelo bodi aldelik obsik!E pardolös obes debis obsik, E pardolös obes döbotis obsik,äs id obs aipardobs debeles obas. äsä i obs pardobs utanes, kels edöbons kol obs.E no obis nindukolös in tendadi; E no blufodolös obis,sod aidalivolös obis de bad. ab livükolös obis de bad!

(Ibä dutons lü ol regän, e nämäd e glor jü ün laidüp.)Jenosöd! So binosös!

But in 1890...

AuxLang : Esperanto (Unua Libra, 1887)

L.L. Zamenhof

AuxLang : Esperanto (& Ido)

AuxLang : Esperanto

AuxLang : Esperanto > Ido

▪ In the early 1900s, there were a significant number of Esperanto “elders” who wanted to reform the language▪ Wanted changes such as:

– Eliminating the accusative– Scrapping accented letters– Changing plural from -j to -i (cf. Italian)– Zamenhof proposed reforms in 1907, but rejected by vote from

community– Group of leaders (20%) and non-leaders (3-4%) defected, creating Ido

▪ Ido still spoken today, but to a much lesser extent than Esperanto

AuxLang : Esperanto

I want… to... speak… Esperanto...

Esperanto’s Community

Surprising Find

AuxLangs : Latino sine Flexione, Basic English, Globish

▪ Simplified versions of natural languages:– Latino sine Flexione (Giuseppe Peano, 1903)▪ “Patre nostro, qui es in celos, que tuo nomine fi sanctificato”▪ “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.”

– Basic English (Charles Ogden, 1930)▪ “At the first God made the heaven and the earth. And the earth was

waste and without form ; and it was dark on the face of the deep : and the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the waters.”

– Globish (Madhukar Gogate, 1998)▪ “hee is fain” (He is fine)▪ “too kaats went tu siti (Two cats went to city.)▪ “du yu no wear tha lybrari is?” (Do you know where the library is?)

AuxLang : Lingwa de Planeta (Lidepla)

▪ Designed by group of Russians, led by Dmitri Ivanov, 2010▪ Based on most widely spoken

languages of the world : Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and French

Last type of ConLang:

EngeLang

Later : Szemerenyi’s Law (Sandell & Byrd)

Most famous EngeLang : Loglan / Lojban

▪ Created by Dr. James Cooke Brown in 1955– Devised to test Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ▪ If people spoke more logical language, would they think more logically?

– Revised in 1987 by Logical Language Group to create Lojban▪ Brown tried to stop it by copyright bans -- group changed vocab

▪ Grammar:– Predicate simplification : no distinction between N, V, A, Adv– Only three types of words:▪ cmene names▪ brivla ‘predicate’ words▪ cmavo ‘structure words’

EngeLang : Lojban

John speaking Lojban

To Review

1.ArtLangs a.For Art (Film, TV, Games, Books, etc.)b.For Religion / Magic

1.AuxLangs

1.EngeLangs

Let’s look at some examples

1. Is it a conlang, yes or no?

1. If no, what is it?

1. If yes, what type of conlang is it?a. ArtLang, AuxLang, or Engelang?b. A priori or a posteriori?

ConLang, Y/N? And what type?

Ah: touching, holding

ah-mah: have

ah-may: pet

ah-noo: help

ah-tah: feed / food

ay: lightness

ay-ay: look

ay-ay-lee-koo: listen

ay-koo: diamond

ay-loh: light

ay-loh-may-lah: cloud

ay-tay: hungry / eat

ay-way: dizzy

boh: be

boh: to be

boh-bay: worried

boh-dah: live

boo: no, negative, bad, stop

boo: no

boo-dah: bad

boo-koo: rock

boo-noo-loo: sad

boo-tay: change

For more

Furbishwee-tah-kah-loo-loo: Tell me a joke.

wee-tah-kah-wee-loo: Tell me a story.

wee-tee-kah-wah-tee: Sing me a song.

u-nye-loo-lay-doo?: Do you want to play?

u-nye-ay-tay-doo?: Are you hungry?

u-nye-boh-doo?: How are you?

u-nye-way-loh-nee-way: Go to sleep now.

u-nye-noh-lah: Show me a dance.

ConLang, Y/N? And what type?

Language Games1. Pig Latin2. (H)aigy Paigy3. Cockney Rhyming Slang4. Fo’ shizzle / -iz-5. Spoonerisms

ConLang, Y/N? And what type?

Example of Polari

Let’s Revisit...

ConLang, Y/N? And what type?

Day 2 - Phonemic Inventories

Constructed Languages

Sounds

or

Okay, let’s begin with humans...

1. Typically how many vowels and consonants exist in a natural language’s phonemic inventory?

○ What is the minimal distinction needed for a language sound system?

2. What are possible sounds for human language?○ What are impossible sounds?

3. Which sounds are typologically common? 4. Which sounds tend to occur as pairs or triads in

language?

Esperanto

Lingwa de Planeta

p=p,as inpieparchab=b,asinball bayam =m,asinmopmamaff=f,asinfatherfumayganw=w,asinwaterwadart=t,asinteam tashid=d,as indaddashyan=n,as innoonnawas=s,asinsocksasaz=z,as inzooIzilar=r,asinSpanishr (i.e.,trill/tap ther,noAmericanr)hirakal =l,asinloglaykwach=ch, asincheckcharwaj=j,asinjamjaysash=sh,as inshootshantiyay=y,asinyesyakak=k,asinkickkakag =g,asingogasurikw=qu,as inquickkwalagw =gw,asingwengwanah=h,as inhello haya

a=Spanisha,asinllama, similartoEnglishfatherkakaay=Englishi,asinhi nayaw=Englishow,asincow chawgrai=Englishee,asincheesehisuu=Englishoo,asinbootudam

http://speakingprimal.blogspot.com/

Language BrandsSkwerl

Prisencolinensinaincisol

Dothraki

Let’s Look at Your Languages

For Next Time

1.Read Carlisle - Syllable Structure Universals and SLA

1.Continue work on your own ConLanga.Identify your Language’s phonotactics

i. Syllable structureii.Minimal Word Requirement

b.Identify / create at least five phonological rules for your language